Jodie Cunningham has called for investment to be made in facilities and infrastructure rather than player wages to develop women’s rugby league in the UK.
The widening gap between England and Australia was starkly exposed by the Jillaroos’ 90-4 triumph when the sides met in Las Vegas, with the world champions fielding a team of full-time professionals from the NRLW.
By contrast, England’s players from the Betfred Super League who receive payment from their clubs are barely covering their expenses and work full-time jobs outside of the sport, but national team captain Cunningham argued money needs to be spent elsewhere first.
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“What we need to do is get the facilities and infrastructure right first,” Cunningham told The Bench podcast.
“Arguably we’re back to front because all we focus on is whether somebody is paid and it can cause more damage than good when you start paying players because it’s small amounts and people don’t know the context, but they’re deemed to be professional and are judged on that level and we’re not exposed to it on a regular basis.
“It’s a rugby league problem that there just isn’t enough money to facilitate what we need to do.”
Along with the A$1.2million salary cap in the NRLW this season, which has expanded to 12 teams in 2025 with addition of Canterbury Bulldogs, Cunningham pointed to the £100million investment in the competition over five years which has gone on developing the infrastructure.
At her own club, St Helens, the women’s and men’s first teams plus academy sides are having to share the Cowley facility which was initially developed just for one squad of players, while most of the staff at BWSL sides are volunteers.
England head coach Stuart Barrow echoed those views, but believes there are changes which can be made to the structure of the domestic competition which would make it more competitive, with the ‘big four’ of Saints, Leeds Rhinos, York Valkyrie and Wigan Warriors having emerged as the dominant forces.
“I always say it’s about an appropriate challenge and, at the moment, in our competition there is the top four and the bottom four etc,” Barrow told The Bench.
“Bringing our girls through DiSE (Diploma in Sporting Excellence scheme) at 17, if one goes to a bottom-four club, as the appropriate challenges they don’t have any success in their development and find it really hard to develop.
“If I send them to a top-four team, they might not have much failure so that hinders development, so we’ve got to look at the competition structure and how we can get people in appropriate environments.
“That’s things without finance, but the game does need lots of investment and lots of money, and the ultimate aim is to get a broadcast deal so we can bring money in.”
Barrow’s proposal for a new format would see the eight BWSL teams play each other once, after which the competition would split into a top four and a bottom four with the teams in each section playing on a home-and-away basis.
The England boss believes that would put the league in a position to get a broadcast deal to showcase it beyond the handful of live games Sky Sports show, including the play-off semi-finals and Grand Final, each season, and allow the investment which is needed.
However, he acknowledged there was still work to do to make the BWSL an attractive proposition to potential broadcast partners.
“That’s me being really honest and that hurts me to say because I’m passionate about the game,” Barrow said.
“We’re some years away from that at the moment, but there are things we can do to make ourselves more broadcast-ready, I believe.
“If you put a game on TV and it’s 80-0, you’re going to lose a lot of viewers automatically. What we’ve got to have is that product where people stay engaged and watch to the 80th minute.
“I understand the quality needs to improve, but that will come with investment and the game needs investment.”
